Are Superhero films dying?

[LuisCarlos17f]

Yes, I have listened in the past Disney brand is losing a lot of money, but it is not my business, it is their fault.

The global economy is not too good, and if families have to save money, you can guess the first sacrifices at home.

And something has to be really wrong when the audience think the last movies suffer worse plots.

 

[overgeeked]

Superhero fatigue and the cyclical nature of...well, everything. Nothing can stay on top forever.

 

[Dire Bare]

I don't see superhero movies "dying" anytime soon. I've been enjoying superhero movies pretty consistently since 1978 (Superman). Do releases in this genre ebb and flow? Sure. Are we currently ebbing? Maybe. Don't care.

The current Marvel movies aren't the peak of the MCU, but I've enjoyed every single one of them. Yes, including Ant-Man III. Is the MCU dead? Nah. I'm really enjoying Loki on Disney+ right now . . . . and I expect more Marvel goodness from Disney in the future. Optimistic for The Marvels in November. I'm not worried.

DC has long struggled to create a consistently good movie franchise to rival that of the MCU, nothing new here. The Flash disapointed at the box office, but again, I enjoyed it. DC will continue to release superhero films, some good, some merely OK. I am optimistic to see what James Gunn is going to give us in the near future.

I'm not one to jump on that bandwagon that superhero films are dying. Or should be. Or whatever. But I DO hope that we get more original sci-fi and fantasy films . . . I'm always up for that! I need to get out there and see The Creator . . .

 

[Deset Gled]

I'd say we're at the end of the "Golden Age" of superhero movies. Obviously, superhero movies go back a long time, and the will continue to make them in the future. But I think that ~2005-2020 was an era that will likely not be seen again for a long time, if ever.

What we saw in the last 20 years is going to be considered the standard for what defines superhero movie tropes. What we will see in the next few years is a race to the bottom, where studios try to relive the glory of the big movies with drastically lower budget. After that, there will be a phase where they grow again slightly in popularity, fueled by "nostalgia" and "retrospective" superhero movies that both "reinvent" and look at superheroes "through a new lens" of whatever is modern at the time.

I say this based on a very rough history of the Western movie genre. They were a staple of cinema with a lot of interest in early/silent films, followed by a pulp status, then a "Golden Age" from ~1940-1960. This was followed by the age of "spaghetti" westerns, and capped off in the 90s with a resurgence in films like Dances with Wolves and Last of the Mohicans. I expect the superhero genre to follow roughly the same pattern.

 

[delericho]

I don't think so. 2023 has just been a weird year for cinema.

What might be ending is the sprawling Cinematic Universe concept - Marvel just hasn't recovered from the outrageous success of Endgame, and DC's efforts have come to naught. So maybe the best thing for them to do is to lean heavily into the multiverse, in that they have all these films with all these characters, and they're all on different branches of time. So they're separate beasts... unless and until they hit on a magic combination of actors and characters that they then want to bring together.

Then again, that's probably just wishful thinking.

 

[payn]

I don't think so. 2023 has just been a weird year for cinema.

What might be ending is the sprawling Cinematic Universe concept - Marvel just hasn't recovered from the outrageous success of Endgame, and DC's efforts have come to naught. So maybe the best thing for them to do is to lean heavily into the multiverse, in that they have all these films with all these characters, and they're all on different branches of time. So they're separate beasts... unless and until they hit on a magic combination of actors and characters that they then want to bring together.

Then again, that's probably just wishful thinking.

 

[Tonguez]

I don't think so. 2023 has just been a weird year for cinema.

What might be ending is the sprawling Cinematic Universe concept - Marvel just hasn't recovered from the outrageous success of Endgame, and DC's efforts have come to naught. So maybe the best thing for them to do is to lean heavily into the multiverse, in that they have all these films with all these characters, and they're all on different branches of time. So they're separate beasts... unless and until they hit on a magic combination of actors and characters that they then want to bring together.

Then again, that's probably just wishful thinking.

They have already pretty much indicated that they're going to be running three or four different lines - the Cosmic Heroes (Guardians. Thor, Marvels), Street Heroes (DareDevil & Co, Spiderman), New Avengers World Heroes - (Captain Falcon, Shuri Panther, Hawkeye girl), Magic Heoes (Dr Strange, Scarlet Witch, Agatha) then theres Thunderbolts and whatever genre Loki is. Could be an interesting development

 

[Stalker0]

We all knew that the superhero as the box office leader wasn't going to last forever, just as zombie movies, alien movies, and westerns have before them. They won't go away, but they will just become "a movie" rather than "this is what's driving the year in movies".

We can argue whether marvel's efforts have lengthened or shortened that timeframe, but as Thanos would say "this is inevitable"

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think they're dying, exactly, so much as they just have reached the point that they've reached diminishing returns.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think they're dying, exactly, so much as they just have reached the point that they've reached diminishing returns.

This.

Marvels trending numbers are apparently terrible. The billion dollar spandex movie seems to be over.